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:: Thursday, October 17, 2002 ::

Discriminations has a good post raising some questions about how some think of gun control:

Friedman will flesh out just what kind of "gun control" he would like the president "to impose" (by martial law?) on Bethesda. What is the basis of his confidence that laws purporting to "make it easier to trace .223 bullets" would in fact work? Exactly how would he disarm America's madmen without disarming everyone else? Exactly what would the legions of weapons inspectors that he would like to see on the streets inspect?

If he is like many gun control advocates, Mr. Friedman probably doesn't care very much about these particulars. The alleviation of his insecurity does not require the implementation of policies that actually might reduce the threat from madmen sharpshooters -- such policies are unknown, and perhaps even unknowable because they probably don't exist. No, what he craves is something politicians are adept at delivering: a demand for tougher laws (whatever they are), denunciations of the gun lobby -- in short, some "I-feel-your-pain" pronouncements that would reduce his "sense that this administration is so obsessed with Saddam it has lost touch with the real anxieties of many Americans."

Maybe this sounds harsh, but it relates to the BBC guy again. He was so obsessed with "reducing gun violence" that he didn't care if violent crimes were going up! He even said to me that he felt safer in New York City than he did in London! The concept that it's crime we need to work on, whether that crime is committed using a gun or bare hands, was completely foreign to him.